Knowing God by J. I. Packer Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Knowing God
Book Review: Excellent Introduction to Christianity
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a must read for all those who are serious about Christianity. It is a good informed introduction to Christianity for those who are thinking individuals. Those who are Christians already can benefit from the systematic approach taken by the author. Highly recommended.Book Review: Excellent source of Knowlege of GOD
Summary: 5 Stars
This is excellent for people who is hungry to understand who GOD is. This helps to expand our knowledge of GOD, and the way Packer had organized the book, help us to thoroughly understand. It is dense, but it is easy to read for all people who are hungry for God whether a new believer or old-time Christians. This is highly recommended to ALL out there.Book Review: Get a better theological understanding of God!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a wonderful book that will intellectually stimulate anyone who reads it. It will change your understanding, and strenghthen your relationship with the God of the Bible by providing a crystal clear picture of Him. I highly recommend this book as a foundation to your Christian life. Great for the new Christian!Book Review: Getting to Know God is Never Easy
Summary: 5 Stars
A classic that is not a light read, but is well worth the effort. I still have an ink spot in my copy from the time I fell asleep reading it! This book will provide you with a well-rounded primer in biblical thinking about salvation,grace, and Christian living.Book Review: Getting to know God's "other side." Idolators beware!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a book for Christian idolators. You're probably scratching your head and wondering what I mean by that phrase, since it seems oxymoronic. How can a person be a Christian and an idolator at the same time? Very simply, by worshiping God as something other or less than he truly is. We all do it to a greater or lesser degree, depending on our theological and doctrinal "upbringing." Every Christian, whether a truly born again believer or a merely nominal professor of Christ, knows a certain amount of truth about God, some of us very little, others rather alot by comparison. Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, your knowledge of the infinite God is forced to pass through the filter of your finite, sin-tainted human mind. The result is a false or incomplete notion of God's nature and character. In other words, we worship something other than the One True and Living God -- i.e., an idol.
Packer writes to alert complacent Christendom to this seemingly little-recognized phenomenon. He astutely points out, though, that this occurs not simply in ignorance or as a function of limited human capacity to comprehend the infinite. Rather, there is a certain degree of willfulness involved, as many of us choose to disregard or downplay those aspects of God's character which we find less pleasant than others. For example, western Christians love to talk about God's mercy, love and providence. We extol his kindness, longsuffering and forgiveness, as if these "good" attributes were the only ones worthy of mention. But what about those qualities which get far less play in the Christian bookstores -- things like wrath, justice, righteousness and holiness? When was the last time you saw a bestseller about the wrath of God? Yet wrath is just as much a part of God's makeup as his mercy. He is no less holy and righteous and just than he is good and forgiving. It is to these unpopular and oft disregarded qualities that Packer redirects our attention.
The author also reminds us of the vast difference between knowing "about" God, and actually "knowing God". In other words, our heads can be filled with theology, but if it doesn't translate into a life-altering relationship of love and obedience toward God, we cannot say that we know God. And so Packer sets out to teach us something about how to know God by exploring his attributes, and in particular the "unhappy" ones. He also, in what I think is one of the best portions of the whole book, spends a fair amount of ink expounding the crucial doctrines of propitation and adoption. Even better, he gives the most succinct and eloquent summary of the gospel which I have ever read, by linking these two concepts in a simple three-word phrase: the gospel is the good news of "adoption through propitiation." The theological depth of that statement is simply mind-bending, and Packer's formulation of it, by itself, makes this book worth reading.
My only criticism would be of the book's undue (in my opinion) verbosity. The author could have communicated the same truth with the same impact in a much more concise presentation. I found some of the chapters toward the center of the volume to be a bit labored and dry, and even occasionally redundant. Nonetheless, this has been and will continue to be a classic, and I commend it to the reading of every believer who is serious about diving deeper into the unfathomable depths of God's nature and character. Let us be idolators no more!